By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Three minutes
Delivering high-quality postsecondary advising involves asking students what they think, feel, and need to be successful. That’s exactly what Florida’s Brevard Public Schools (BPS) did when they launched
a Universal College and Career Readiness (CCR) Survey for all students in grades 9 through 12.
Kimberly “KPS” Perry-Sanderlin, College and Career Readiness Content Specialist, and Angela Feldbush, College and Career Specialist at West Shore Jr./Sr. High, shared their approach during NCAN’s Data into Practice roundtable at NCAN 2025
in New Orleans, LA. Their work offers a practical model that most districts could probably adopt or adapt to better understand student aspirations and barriers on the path to education and training after high school.
Why a Universal CCR Survey?
For BPS, the move toward a single districtwide survey wasn’t just about collecting more data. As I’ve noted to National College Attainment Network (NCAN) members before, “nice to have” in terms of data isn’t usually nice to have if it isn’t being put
to good use. Developing and fielding the survey was about connecting advising practice directly to BPS’ strategic plan and overcoming limited data access in 2023-24.
The survey provides a structured pre-assessment with insights straight from students. This allows staff to work more efficiently and effectively, reducing guesswork and helping schools deploy resources where they matter most based on what students themselves indicate.
The effort had several key ingredients:
Buy-in from College and Career Specialists who helped design and interpret the survey.
Leadership endorsement, including superintendent approval to make the survey opt-out rather than opt-in. This is important - anyone who has ever fielded a survey knows it can sink or swim based on response rate. Making the survey opt-out, along
with the practice of following up with families about why students haven’t responded, ensures that BPS collects data from all students, not just self-selectors.
Collaborative design, with educators co-creating the questions during professional development days.
The result is a practical, replicable tool that gives districts a real-time look at what students hope to do after high school and what’s standing in their way.
From Raw Data to Action
Feldbush walked participants through the district’s straightforward but powerful data-use cycle. Staff start by examining raw responses and sorting them by grade level. They identify student groups that may need extra attention, tag urgent concerns, and
create plans based on what the data reveals. Over time, schools can summarize findings to share with administrators, partners, and community organizations, and then look for year-to-year growth and change.
That process does more than generate numbers. It builds a common language around readiness and creates accountability for whether schools are moving the needle on student awareness, confidence, and opportunity.
Building the Bridge Between Surveys and Advising Frameworks
This kind of universal survey pairs naturally with the grade 9-12 high-quality advising framework from Dr. Mandy Savitz-Romer
and Dr. Janice Bloom, recently featured here at NCAN. Their framework charts the developmental knowledge, skills, and experiences students should gain in each grade. A tool like BPS’s survey provides the feedback loop districts need to measure how
well students are actually progressing toward those benchmarks.
If the high-quality advising framework defines what students should experience, a universal CCR survey helps to show what they are experiencing. Together, they form a powerful system: one articulates the standards, the other checks for understanding.
Listening, Learning, Acting, Adapting, and Adopting
Surveys like this are highly adaptable. Most districts, across size and locality, can create their own version aligned to local priorities. What matters most is the mindset: that understanding students’ aspirations, interests, and obstacles is essential
to delivering equitable advising.
Listening to students is foundational, not an add-on, in the advising process. More districts can and should adopt universal CCR surveys. When they do, the field will gain a clearer, more complete picture of what readiness looks like through the eyes
of the students themselves. That’s the first step toward ensuring that every student, in every grade, has access to the high-quality advising and supports they need to reach their goals.
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